Illinois Wesleyan University Digital Commons @ IWU Honorees for Teaching Excellence Honors 5-12-1964 The Influence of Primitive Art Rupert Kilgore Illinois Wesleyan University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/teaching_excellence Part of the Art and Design Commons Recommended Citation Kilgore, Rupert, "The Influence of Primitive Art" (1964). Honorees for Teaching Excellence. 33. https://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/teaching_excellence/33 This Article is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by Digital Commons @ IWU with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this material in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/ or on the work itself. This material has been accepted for inclusion by University Archivist & Special Collections Librarian at Illinois Wesleyan University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ©Copyright is owned by the author of this document. The Influence of Address by Pmfessor Rupert Kilgore Director of the School of A1't on the occasion of the Annual Century Club Dinner held on May 12, 1964. Mr. Kilg01'e had been chosen by the faculty as recipient of the Century Club Awa1'd for 1964. ILLINOIS WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY Bloomington, Illinois THE INFLUENCE OF PRIMITIVE ART The only completely positive prediction we can make concerning the painting and sculpture of tomorrow is that it will be different from the painting and sculpture of today, The history of art is a history of chang­ ing styles. Since works of serious art express the epoch that produced them, variation in artistic styles is no broader and no more rapid than variations in other facets of a culture. Innovations in art styles do not occur because of fashion but because changing social conditions bring new demands. Better knowledge of the social conditions and demands of a given period lead to a better understanding of the arts of that period. The converse is also true. One of the major influences upon painting and sculpture of this cenw tlllY has been the ali of primitive peoples. Today, we are able to study the rise of that influence more objectively and we are in a better position to understand the social conditions that invited it as well as the various directions the influence took.\Ve must understand that such an influence could not appear until the conditions surrounding the artists demanded it. The arts of certain primitive peoples had been known by Europeans since the late Renaissance but had been regarded as mere curiosities. While visiting Brussels in 1520, Albrecht DUrer, the most important print-maker of his day, saw a collection of gifts sent by Montezuma to the King of Spain. Diirer wrote in his diary: «Then I saw the things which were brought to the King out of the New Land Of Gold ... every kind of wondrous thing ... all sorts of marvelous objects which are much more beautiful to behold than things spoken of in fairy tales. In all the days of my life I have seen nothing which so fills my heart with joy, for I beheld wondrous artful things and I marveled over the subtle genius of those men in strange countries." Although DUrer saw these objects with the eye of an artist, there is no evidence in his later work of any influence. This is true because he found no similaritv between the culture of the Incas and the culture of his own time and piace. During the eighteenth century Captain Cook brought back to Europe many primitive artifacts from islands in the south Pacific and the nOlihw west coast of North America.Nineteenth centlllY missionaries in all prim­ itive areas were exhOlting their new converts to destroy their false gods, At the same time they themselves were collecting these objects and send­ ing them home for safe keeping. Because of celiain attitudes that had carried over from the Enlightenment, these were still regarded as un­ usual curiosities, When the idea of progress meant that anything that superseded something else was automatically better, people saw nothing esthetic in primitive art. As interest in ethnology increased during the nineteenth century, works of primitive art appeared in the ethnographic sections of the large international expositions, These were held in London in 1851 and 1887 and in Paris in 1854 and 1878-culminating in the Universal Exposition in Paris in 1889, where Van Gogh and Gauguin first experienced primitive art. However, most Europeans stin took a limited and chauvinistic attitude toward these primitive artifacts. Under 2 such conditions, serious artists found little need for any influences from the primitive. But as Darwin's ideas conceming biological evolution spread, men realized that many of his theories could be applied to social evolution and there came the realization that primitive cultures of the world had certain aspects in common with the much earlier cultures in Europe. This theory was suppOlted by the discovery of prehistoric cave paintings and fertility fetishes in France, Spain, and Austria. By the be­ ginning of the twentieth century, Europeans and Americans had devel­ oped a more sympathetic understanding of primitive cultures and were beginning to see these people as human beings. Some artists of the time searched more deeply and found certain characteristics in primitive art that could make a positive contribution to their own art. We now mow that the two most important contributions were: honesty of expression and truth to materials. All nve of the Post-Impressionists-Cezanne, Seurat, Gauguin, Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec-were escapists in a sense. The industrial revolution had brought many workers from the country into the already­ crowded cities, scientinc progress and materialism had weakened organ­ ized religion and the kind of art demanded by the academy was thin, meaningless, and academic. Seurat shut himself in his studio and locked the door. Toulouse-Lautrec lived in the "demi-monde" apart from his aristocratic friends and relatives. While artists from most countries were struggling to get to Paris, Cezanne, Van Gogh, and Gaugoin left it. Gauguin travelled to the South Seas and lived in a native village in Tahiti. Van Gogh went to ArIes and Cezanne to Aix-en-Provence-both small country towns in the south of France. Each of the nve, in his own way, wanted to escape from what he felt were influences detrimental to serious art and at the same time have the opportunity to develop a personal means of expression that would help him nnd his own esthetic and spiritual synthesis. Strangely enough, Gauguin was the only one of the five directly influenced by primitive art but not by the art of Tabiti. The exotic color and rhythms that developed in his paintings came chiefly from the jungle environment and the natural mode of living of the Ta­ hitians. His primitive influence came from Egyptian paintings he had seen in the Louvre in Paris. For the past five hundred years, painting in Europe had changed its style slowly with each new movement evolving from or rebelling against the preceding movement. It seems strange that suddenly around 1900, painters and sculptors should choose to find their influences in the ex­ tremely different primitive art. However, this was not the nrst time foreign influence had appeared in western Europe. The eighteenth cenfi tury had seen a strong invasion of Chinese porcelains, textiles, and lacquer-work which became popular in the decoration of interiors. Many designers imitated these imported products to produce decorative items. But there is no Oriental influence in the serious art of the period. By the 1870's, soon after Japan was opened to westem trade, colored wood-cuts from that country were flowing into the art markets of Europe. These prints were purchased by and exerted an influence upon the work of vVhistler, Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin, and Van Gogh. Deep space in 3 these prints was controlled more by visual than by illusionistic means. For the first time since the fifteenth century, painters recovered a sense of the two�dimensional picture plane upon which they worked. This resulted in more interest in shapes as shapes and colors as colors. The Japanese influence made it easier for the still more strange and exotic primitive work to influence painting and sculpture of this century. Although the Post-Impressionists were not influenced by primitive art, their attitudes revealed a deeply-felt need for a more sincere and leS6 artificial means of expression. Later, when Matisse, Rouault, and Vla­ minck began to see the sculptures from Negro Mrica and the South Seas as works of art rather than exotic curiosities, they realized that the creators of these works were sincere and completely unself-conscious. They began to combine the Hat bright colors of Gauguin and Van Gogh with the simplification found in primitive art to reach new heights of personal expression. These men first exhibited as a group in the Salon d'Automne in 1905. Because of their bright colors and freely distorted drawing, they soon became known as "Les Fauves"-"the Wild Beasts". The new primitive influence caught on rapidly in Germany. By 1900, the younger painters in that country resented strongly the academic pressure of official art to keep them working in the style of nineteenth century classicism and romanticism. When Nolde, Kirchner, and Schmidt­ Rottlufl organized a movement called the "Junge Kunst" ("Art of Youth"), many members of the younger generation joined it. Most of the group had already been introduced to African Negro sculpture and the work of Van Gogh and Gauguin.